Draft:Adolf Portmann

Adolf Portmann (Basel, Switzerland, 27 May 1897 – 28 June 1982) was a Swiss biologist, zoologist, anthropologist and philosopher who made significant theoretical contributions to the semantic understanding of the living organism.

Biography

Born in Basel, Switzerland, Portmann studied zoology at the University of Basel. He later worked in Geneva, Munich, Paris and Berlin, primarily in marine biology laboratories in France (Banyuls-sur-Mer, Roscoff, Villefranche-sur-Mer) and Heligoland.

In 1931, he was appointed professor of zoology in Basel. His main areas of research included marine biology and comparative morphology of vertebrates. His work was often interdisciplinary, incorporating sociological and philosophical aspects of the lives of animals and humans.

In 1965 he was awarded the "Sigmund Freud Prize for Scientific Prose"

Portmann died in Binningen, near Basel, on 28 June 1982.

Thought

Form

Adolf Portmann defines life focusing on the concept of form. For Portman, each living form is represented on a "screen", where others could see it. Such a screen is only possible on opaque surfaces, which conceal "interiority" and reveal a particular form full of meaning.

Contrary to the tradition of Neo-Darwinist geneticists who conceive life as based on a molecular dogma, Portmann argued that it is futile to search for the foundations of life in internal (e.g., molecular) causes. For the Swiss zoologist, influenced by Uexküll, the interiority of the organism is not directly accessible. Instead, Portmann emphasized the richness of meanings that are recognized on the surface of the organism, in its shape, texture, colors, and behaviors.

The forms that make up the exterior of living things stand out to the extent that they conceal an inner dimension (Innenwelt) from which their Umwelt is contemplated, and eventually transformed. The exterior possesses an aesthetic value, while internal organs are aesthetically poor. For example, in most vertebrates, the internal organs are arranged in a less symmetrical way compared to the exterior. This is true as long as the body is opaque. Portmann provides a counterexample with certain aquatic organisms, such as jellyfish and the glass frog whose skin is translucent. The glass frog has its internal organs arragned in a more symetric manner compared with the rest of frog species which are opaque.

The aesthetic function

While Darwin acknowledged the importance of aesthetics in animals, Neo-Darwinism discarded non utilitarian functions in modern synthesis. According to Portmann, animals are "characters" or "vector" objects, as they point from their interiority with "intention", revealing non-utilitarian functions. If aesthetic forms serve a purpose, it is to reveal the organism's interiority—its inaccessible world—which partially becomes palpable in its skin, shell, horns, feathers, and habits.

Presence

Portmann highlighted how life forms somehow privilege external symmetry despite the asymmetry of their internal organs. It is as if the organism "knows" it is being observed, thus presenting its best aspect, which explains the greater symmetry and ornamentation of the exterior and the concealment of the asymmetries and "ugliness" of the interior. This opposition between inaccessible interiority and symbolic exteriority is inherent in life. Based on this idea, Portmann defined, in German, the concept "eigentliche Erscheinungen" which translates to 'current appearance' or 'act of presence' in English.

The actual appearance is the expression of the organism's self-representation. The phenomenon itself, as Karel Kleisner calls it, shows meanings, whether or not they have an obvious destination or recipient. Even if there is no apparent repository of meaning, there may still be meaning (even if it does not possess meaning). For Portmann, life is semiotic, and meanings and senses are biologically universal.

If the meaning has an obvious repository, it makes sense, and two options arise: the message is either "honest" or "dishonest." Neo-Darwinism arrived at the notions of honest and dishonest from the concept of natural selection Thus Mullerian and Batesian mimicry was established. However, Neo-Darwinism completely ignored the subjective/evaluative (semiotic) charge of the notions of honest and dishonest, ultimately inevitable in the explanation of mimicry. For Neo-Darwinists, mimicry, is set from a genetic expression, it is a consequence of individual success or survival, genes are selfish. On the other hand, for Portmann, mimicry is not necessarily a consequence (of genetic selection) but an effect of subjective, irrational causes. Portmann's phenomenological approach moved beyond Neo-Darwinism, contributing to the construction of a new science: biosemiotics.

Contributions to biosemiotics

Uexküll had already rebelled against the view of the organism as a mere conglomerate of mechanisms that respond to external stimuli, like a machine that dispenses soft drinks. Uexküll's notion of Umwelt, assimilated and adapted by Portmann, liberates biological thought from the constraints of the mechanistic, giving way to the symbolic.

Unlike Uexküll, Portmann did not deny natural selection. However, like León Croizat, he observed various scenarios where natural selection is secondary, where the structural and aesthetic prevail.

Portmann was influenced by the phenomenological atmosphere that emerged in the early twentieth century, with figures like Edmund Husserl. Uexküll's thought contributed to this phenomenological atmosphere. For Husserl, Uexküll, and Portmann, life itself is the center of their world (Umwelt), a world that is felt and altered from within.

The idea that underlies and prevails, and that Portmann empowers, is that the objects entering the organism's Umwelt are revealed and experienced according to how the organism's perception is structured, following a certain grammar of interpretation or biosemiotics, which is universal. The organism's freedom is guaranteed by the random (irrational) combinations of symbols and their interpretations. The way the organism engages with form is a symbolic experience. Portmann, like the philosophers of phenomenology, recognized a structure of consciousness such that the organism interprets symbols, with or without the "illusion" of rationalizing them. For Husserl, Hartman, as well as for Portmann, (rational) objectivity is nothing more than an illusion, created from the subjectivity of the organism.

Semantic organ

In his concept of organic self-representation, Portmann considered the outer surface of living organisms as an organ fulfilling a "function" (not necessarily utilitarian) in self-representation. He used this idea as a starting point to elaborate and redefine concepts that biosemiotics scholars find compatible with the theoretical framework of biosemiotics. Despite the many theories that explain aposematism, camouflage, deception, and other phenomena related to mimicry, there is still a need for a more universal theory (than Neo-Darwinism) that synthesizes the evolutionary, morphogenetic, and semiotic aspects, as seen in the self-representation of organisms and their behavior. Adolf Portmann's concept of self-representation takes a significant step in this direction.

For Portmann, the semantic organ makes sense from a specific interpretation of the Umwelt of certain superficial patterns. These patterns begin to be distinguished in the course of morphogenetic processes during ontogenesis and phylogenesis. The persistence of the semantic organ is due to the act of self-representation and specific interpretation from the Umwelt. This suggests a scenario of conventions filled with meanings that allow the connection between two independent worlds, the inner world and the Umwelt.​​Natural selection is not strictly necessary in this scientific approach. The role of selection, if any, is defined by the significance within the organism's Umwelt, not the other way around. Natural selection does not explain why, for example, the black-and-yellow coloration pattern persists among tigers, certain snakes, and bees, even though these species have lifestyles that are largely disconnected from each other. In all these scenarios, this coloration pattern universally signals danger, even to humans. Natural selection does not account for why this pattern persists over another, such as pink and sky blue. Nor does it explain the elegance and grace observed in the Bengal tiger. Natural selection is secondary to the phenomena that accommodate, ontogenetically and phylogenetically, living forms. In other words, natural selection, if present, is secondary to orthogenesis (sensu Croizat)​. Natural selection is a possible rationalization within the human Umwelt that follows the logic of survival, while orthogenesis recognizes that things are perceived by the organism as they are, within an interpretative framework structured by conventions filled with meanings, whether these are arbitrary or not. Life does not obey the logic of survival but exists as it is ("Dasein" sensu Heidegger), despite the constraints imposed by survival. Life is a source of symbols that offer novelties due to the organism's freedom of interpretation. The semantic organ is therefore not primarily a utilitarian organ but a phenomenological organ.

Contributions to anthropology

Physiological prematurity

According to the concept of physiological prematurity (related to the concept of "neoteny"), humans are animals "born too early". Although the fetus undergoes the maturation of motor coordination and sensory organs in the womb, the human being is, at the moment of birth, comparatively helpless. This contrasts with the maturity and skills of other higher mammals at birth (e.g., elephants, horses). This characteristic of humans means that many developmental processes must be integrated into the sociocultural environment after birth. Due to their dependence on human social interactions and cultural influences, humans must remain open to them. According to Portmann, this special capacity for "openness" is a prerequisite for cultural and spiritual learning.

Work

• • The animal form (1948)
  • The Animal as a Social Being (1953)
  • Zoology and the New Image of Man (1956, 3rd ed. 1969)
  • Biology and Mind (1956, republished with a foreword by Thure von Uexküll 1999)
  • New Ways of Biology (1961)
  • The Dawn of Life Research (1965)
  • Manipulation of Man as Fate and Threat (Zurich, 1969)
  • Vom Lebendigen (1973)
  • At the Limits of Knowledge (1974, autobiography)

Literature

• Joachim Illies. Adolf Portmann. Ein Biologe vor dem Geheimnis des Lebendigen. Herder, Freiburg/Basel/Wien 1976
• Rolf Kugler. Adolf Portmanns' Philosophy of Biology. EVZ-Verlag, Zürich 1967
• Matthias Riedl. Adolf Portmann – Ein Skeptiker auf der Suche. In: Elisabetta Barone, Matthias Riedl, Alexandra Tischel (Hrsg.): Pioniere, Poeten, Professoren. Eranos und der Monte Verità in der Zivilisationsgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts. In: Eranos – Neue Folge. Nr. 11. Würzburg 2003, pp. 115–126
• Markus Ritter. Die Biologie Adolf Portmanns in zeitgeschichtlichem Kontext, in: Basler Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Altertumskunde, vol. 100 (2000), pp. 207–254 (Volltext).
• Roger Alfred Stamm, Pio Fioroni. Adolf Portmann, ein Rückblick auf seine Forschungen. In: Verhandlungen der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft in Basel 94, 1984: 87–120

References

1. Portmann, Adolf (2013). La forme animale (in French). The Bibliothèque.
2. ↑ Kleisner, K (2008). «The semantic morphology of Adolf Portmann: a starting point for the biosemiotics of organic form?». Biosemiotics. doi:10.1007/s12304-008-9014-4.
3. ^{to b} Aldana, Otálora-Luna, E, F (2019). «Artistic notion of mimicry, a case study: Does Triatoma maculata (Hemiptera: Reduviidae: Triatominae) plagiarize bees, tigers or traffic signals?». Biosemiotics. DOI:10.1007/S12304-019-09351-1.
4. ↑ Klesiner, K (2015). «Semantic organs: The concept and its theoretical ramifications.». Biosemiotics. DOI:10.1007/S12304-015-9246-Z.
5. ↑ Barbieri, M (2007). «Introduction to biosemiotics: The new biological synthesis.». Springer.
6. ↑ Barbieri, M (2014). «From biosemiotics to code biology.». Biological Theory.
7. ↑ Viloria, A (2004). «Critical vision of the theory of mimicry». Croizatia.

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